In 1972, Quaker Oats launched a new commercial for Life cereal featuring three-year-old John Gilchrist as “Little Mikey.” The 30-second ad starts with two young boys arguing over who should try the cereal first. They eventually decide to pass it off on their brother, Mikey, who apparently hates everything. “Hey Mikey! He likes it!” one of them famously shouts after Mikey ends up enjoying the cereal:The Candy-and-Soda Death Story That Fooled a GenerationBy the late 1970s, parents across the country finally caught wind of a crazy story their children had been telling each other about poor Little Mikey. They learned that the actor who played Mikey in the beloved Life commercial was supposedly no longer with us because his stomach had exploded. The culprit in this horrific accident? A fatal mixture of Pop Rocks and Coke.Around that time, Gilchrist’s mother got a phone call from a concerned friend, who told her through tears, “I’m so sorry to hear about your son.” There was just one problem with these heartfelt condolences: Gilchrist had actually gotten home from school a little while earlier, and was very much alive. In fact, he still is; he’s also the Director of Media Sales for the MSG network.But that hasn’t stopped the Pop Rocks tale from becoming one of the most famous urban legends of all time. And though the once-popular candies didn’t really kill Little Mikey, the bad publicity proved fatal to the Pop Rocks brand. “It died bad. Business just dried up,” said former Pop Rocks business manager Jerry Saltzgaber. “We were stuck with a lot of product to destroy,” he continued. The fizzing candies made a comeback years later, but they’re nowhere near the cultural phenomenon they once were.The post Did the Kid From the Life Cereal Ads Really Die From Mixing Pop Rocks and Coke? appeared first on VICE.